Cameras and Photography Explained

I’m cheating. Even though yesterday wasn’t an official workshop day (a few of our group were still arriving), I spent a couple of hours yesterday in the Hotel Colon’s excellent conference facilities doing some photographic teaching with the majority of the students. Since I’ve only got a couple more students to get caught up today, I’ll do that on the plane, the bus, the panga, and every chance I get until everyone’s up to speed. 

Because I teach some very particular aspects in my approach to photography and use a very specific vocabulary, I need to get everyone bought in and on the same page. No, I’m not going to recap the specific things I teach; come to a workshop if you’re curious ;~). But as you’ll see, we won’t have much time before we hit a very target rich spot, so basically I have only today to get some of my teaching into everyone’s head before the fireworks begin.

This morning we checked out of the hotel and went to the airport for our late morning flight to San Cristobal, where our boat sails from. 

It might surprise you that there are now multiple airlines flying to and from the airlines, most notably TAME (the Equadorian military-started airline), and AeroGal (a subsidiary of Avianca). The very first time I went to the islands, there was basically one flight a day. These days there are multiples, and serving two airports (Baltra and San Cristobal). With tourism supposedly* at about 160,000 visitors a year, that implies a need for almost 500 seats a day to the islands, but it’s also common for many of the locals to fly back and forth to the mainland, too. For example, one of naturalists was on the flight with most of the group. 

*Why did I write “supposedly”? Because 160k visitors at 16 visitors a group means you need 10,000 group weeks to hit that number. But in terms of boats there are about enough to absorb 100 groups a week, and with 52 weeks in a year that implies a max of about 83,000 visitors using the boats. So either Ecuador is counting Ecuadorians visiting the four cities in the islands, or the number is wrong (or both ;~).

The hour-and-a-half flight is being flown these days mostly by Airbus 319s and 320s (AeroGal), and some older 737s. 

The airports on the islands are going through some transition. The new terminal at Baltra has apparently been built since I was there two years ago, and the one on San Cristobal is in progress. The process of landing used to be total chaos, now it’s just near chaos. It used to be that you paid your park fees when you got to the island, and it was worse than customs in some countries with all the people waiting in line, especially when multiple planes landed simultaneously. 

Today—at least for San Cristobal—the park fee and forms required are being paid and filled out in advance, so it’s mostly just a line to present them, get them stamped (and your passport stamped with a tortoise if you’d like) and hand you back your exit and souvenir card (don’t lose the exit card; when you leave it’ll cost you US$10 and some extra effort if you do). So things move a lot faster than they used to. 

Still, with an Airbus full of folk needing to perform the entry process, there will be a line, and it will take a few minutes to get through this process. Upon exit, you’ll be met by a representative(s) for your boat. No need to claim baggage in San Cristobal, they’ve figured out how to match luggage up to boats and just bring those directly to the boat. 

Since I was sitting up front in the plane, as was one of our naturalists, it was just a matter of minutes before I was off the plane and out of the terminal waiting for the rest of our group and introducing them to our two naturalists. Unfortunately, two of our group were amongst the last to get off, so we had to wait one full plane-load to get our group back to together. That said, it’s a far more pleasant process today, faster, and you don’t tend to have situations like what I once encountered, where I was standing outside in the mid-day heat for over an hour waiting to even get to the park entrance procedure. 

With the group together, we boarded a bus and made the five-minute drive to the public dock. And that’s when you could begin to tell we were a group of photographers. Sea lions were on the dock, around the dock, near the dock, in the water next to the dock, and everything stopped as shutters started getting clicked. It’s always good to get that first wildlife encounter out of the way quickly. 

Into the pangas (Zodiacs in our boat’s case) and off to our ship for lunch, some preliminary orientation, and of, course, the required fire drill muster and safety test (must be done within 24 hours of embarking, but it makes sense to do it immediately so that people know exactly what they should do in emergencies). 

After a nice buffet lunch, we gave everyone a few minutes to do some unpacking, then at 4pm, we were back in the pangas to the dock, loaded up a bus and went for a half-hour drive up to a volcanic cone filled with a lake at El Junco. The attraction here was frigate birds, though some got caught in photographing other birds:

Wait, I was writing about frigate birds, I think. 

The interesting thing about frigate birds is that they are aquaphobic. Unlike many sea birds, they don’t actually dive into the ocean to catch fish. They like to steal from others who’ve done the dirty work ;~). Indeed, frigate birds are a strange bunch: they only nest in bushes or trees, and the only other thing they do is fly plus at this time of year, mate and raise young. They don’t like water because they don’t have the lanolin and other protection on their feathers that many birds do (e.g. the Boobies). They aren’t exactly equipped with long legs like some birds, and the terrain means that if they get to the ground, they often will have a difficult time getting back into the air. I’ve encountered grounded frigate birds that ended up in some dense bushes and had no way to get back into the air without having to pick their way through the bushes on their awkward legs.

Still, all animals need fresh water, and they need to stay clean. And here at our first site, we got to watch frigate birds drop down into the fresh water of collapsed cone (briefly) and get what they needed, and in a few cases, get some much needed cleansing. I watched one young bird get a little too wet, and he then struggled to keep flying after that. 

You’ll see frigate birds barely touch water (with their beaks) most of the time. With sea water, they’d only be doing that if they thought there was something they could scoop from the water, such as a fish dropped by another bird. But when they get wet, they start to look a bit disheveled in flight:

Normally, they look much more trim and graceful:

Since this was our first attempts at birds in flight on the trip, and because the conditions weren’t exactly conducive to great shooting, all of us—including me—went through a bit of trial and error and practice this afternoon. That’s sort of as planned. Tomorrow we have one of the best bird sites in the islands to visit, so getting everyone used to what they need to do to get the shots they want was a useful afternoon’s work.

Now for the bizarre side of Thom: I never pass up signs, especially odd or unusual or curiously placed ones. I have this fetish about them: I have to figure out how to use the sign in some visual pun or message of some sort. 

Halfway down the trail to the shore edge, which wasn’t all that photographic, we came upon the following sign. Yes, that’s me on the left talking with Drew about what we might do with it, and someone else’s picture of us trying to come up with a picture. Yeah, that’ll work ;~). Foreshadowing: you’re going to see more signs in this blog.   

We didn’t have a lot of time with the birds at the lake, as it loses light early and the highland mists also conspired against us. We also have a very long cruise to deal with this evening, and thus need to get away from Puerto Moreno as soon as possible. Indeed, no sooner did we get back on the boat just after sunset, the Captain raised anchor and we were off. 

Not a lot of images to write about today, but that will change dramatically tomorrow, our first full day in the Galapagos.

Landings: the docks at Puerto Moreno provide a dry landing, though often you’ll be picking your way through sea lions 

Snorkeling: generally no snorkeling on arrival days, as by the time you’ve settled down in the boat you really only have time for one activity

Major New Sightings: sea lion, frigate bird

Another long cruise overnight brought us to the Northern side of Santa Cruz to Playa Las Bachas. Again we were able to get right onto shore at first light. 

The beach here was in pristine form when we hit it, and we could clearly see turtle tracks up to the top of the shore dunes, where the females dig holes and lay their eggs. We were hoping that we might find a tardy turtle who didn’t get her chore done deep in the night, but unfortunately we weren’t lucky. 

Still, we had an enjoyable morning walk at Las Bachas, visiting two lagoons, each with a single flamingo and perhaps a half dozen marine iguanas, some doing their glamour shot poses for us (above). Plus we found a mother Lava Gull and her two chicks nicely camouflaged in the rocks. Indeed, so well camouflaged that even if you pointed the spot out to someone, it took them awhile to actually see the chicks. Generally, most people didn’t see them until they moved. 

That’s probably a good thing, as Lava Gulls are now endangered and less than a thousand of the species remain here on the island. 

As usual, the shoreline provided plenty of interest today:

After our morning walk, it was on to Baltra, where we stopped to pick up fuel for the boat. Surprisingly, very few boats were in the harbor, which means that we’re probably in a little gap of boats (most National Geographic cruises start a day earlier than we did). So while the Letty (which we’re on), Flamingo I, and Eric owned by Ecoventura all started off together, we’ve seen very few other boats so far. I hope that is going to remain mostly the case, but we haven’t hit any of the most popular sites yet. This week we’re on what I’d call the “far reach” tour, as most our visitation sites in this first part of the workshop are well away from the two airports and the primary circuit, and especially far from the Letty’s home port on San Cristobal.

But today, we’re never more than an hour-and-a-half boat ride from the bigger airport, so I’m wondering where the other boats are. Perhaps we got lucky and got two visitation sites that the others didn’t. 

After lunch and the refuel, we moved the boat to Cerro Dragon and some went for a mostly uneventful afternoon snorkel (don’t worry, they’ll get eventful). After the snorkel, we disembarked for the land to see:

Yes, another lone flamingo. Guess they’re all ignoring each other right now and setting up in separate ponds. David did a great job of catching the stray feather in his shot. Tony’s got great leg position and the beak drips timed nicely. So one thing you might realize that I was talking about during the workshop was “timing.” We’re looking for something besides that glamour pose I started today’s post with: we want to see animal behavior, and we want to capture just the right moment when we can show something besides just a basic portrait of the animal.

Cerro Dragon has a bit of history. It’s one of the few places on the big island of Santa Cruz that has native land iguanas present. The problem is that there were feral dogs in the area, threatening the lizard population. The park service moved the iguanas to a “penned” area elsewhere on the island, even moving soil from the Cerro Dragon area so that the iguana nests could be in their natural environment. The dogs have since been removed, and in 1990 the park began returning iguanas back to Cerro Dragon. The animals are still a bit skittish, though, and the park service has to continue monitoring feral animals in the area, particularly cats and donkeys. 

The good news, of course, is that iguanas are one of the two very successful breeding and repopulation successes Charles Darwin Station and its researchers have accomplished over the years. Cerro Dragon had no iguanas when I first visited the islands. Now it does again. 

You’re probably a bit surprised at the photos you’re seeing so far: not exactly what you expected, right? Part of that is our itinerary, which is very bird oriented up front. Don’t worry, you’ll see more and more diversity, just as we did. In the meantime, it’s worth looking at a few of the other things we’re encountering:

We originally decided start image reviews tonight, but that was cut short by an announcement from the Captain that there had been a 8.2 earthquake in Chile and the Islands were now under a tsunami warning. While the ocean is very deep outside the islands, the inner area is a relatively shallow plate, and that’s where tsunamis raise their ugly heads and cause destructive. Unfortunately, we’re right in the middle of that shallow area at the moment. That meant that we are going to rush to deep water (500 foot or higher) instead of our intended route and are going to get bounced around a bit in more open ocean. The Equadorian Navy asked that all boats pull out of port and get to 200 feet deep water, so we’re playing it even more safe than suggested. Still everyone went to bed wondering what was actually going to happen that night. Would we get a “big wave” or not? 

Landings: Las Bachos and Cerro Dragon are both wet landings, with fairly quick drop offs into deep water; Cerro Dragon is a rocky beach

Snorkeling: done off the beach or panga

Major New Sightings: flamingo, new finches, baby finches 

Since we anchored at nearby Punta Espinoza overnight, an early wake-up and breakfast got us onshore at the earliest possible time, plus there were no other boats anchored with us, so we had the site to ourselves for quite some time this morning. Indeed, this was one our longest walks to date, time wise. Punta Espinoza is the only visitation site on Fernandina, and the island has no introduced mammals, which is one reason why you see such a huge colony of iguanas here: basically it’s only food sources that constrain them. This particular area was formed in the 1800’s by volcanic activity that caused an uprising, and Fernandina is the island with the most recent volcanic activity (a huge eruption in 1968, the most recent in 1995).

The attraction here is instantly visible: marine iguanas everywhere. It’s almost impossible to not step on a lizard tail there are so many of them. It may be difficult to tell from the wide angle shot, above, but those black objects are not lava (though they’re on the lava): they’re literally thousands of marine iguanas. And these iguanas all had first light on them. At this time in the morning, the lizards are just trying to warm their bodies to get ready for their swim for food. So while we have thousands of iguanas to try to figure out how to compose, at least they’re not moving around (much).

It took us almost three hours to do what couldn’t have been more than a mile worth of walking (the full trail is about 2000m, but we didn’t do it all). With no other groups on land, we had plenty of time to work on framing pile after pile of iguanas. We also had some more interesting bits, such as one Sally Lightfoot crab snacking on another Sally Lightfoot crab. If you look carefully to see everything that’s around you, sometimes you spot little anomalies like that. Plus there’s always the occasional male dominance fight with the iguanas (hint: December would probably be peak season for fighting males). 

You really have to keep your eyes open, despite all those distracting iguanas. Doug managed to find someone having breakfast:

This brings up the tension point about places that are so target rich like this one. You have a choice of the bird in the viewfinder, or two in the next bush. It’s a tricky dynamic. Personally, I think you should keep with the bird in the viewfinder (or whatever you’re shooting). The only reasons to move on are: (1) you’ve optimized that shot (and be honest with yourself on that) and aren’t likely to get better; or (2) you haven’t optimized that shot and need to work it some more to get the best possible shot. Sometimes with animals or light you’re playing a waiting game, too. You’re waiting for the bird to take off, or the lizard to shoot sea salt out its nostrils, etc. So there’s always a judgment call involved. And yes, in places like the Galapagos if you move ten feet you might be treated to something better. 

But what I’ve found is that far too many people—including myself sometimes—are too quick to dismiss what they’re doing for fear of missing something else. I’m pretty sure that even just five days in, everyone’s looking at everyone else’s images and wondering why they didn’t see something. Well, they were working on something else, that’s why! There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you let yourself get into image envy you’re selling yourself short. Find a shot and take the best possible version of it you can; yours may be the shot that others wished they had gotten ;~). 

This tension is one of the reasons why many of us pros return to the same place over and over. Sure, we didn’t get the bat being eaten by the snake shot this trip, but maybe next time.

Note that on most one-week Galapagos tours the tension is almost always broken by the guides forcing you to move on as a 16-person group. Being the one serious photographer in a large group that includes more casual visitors is almost guaranteed to be frustrating, as you’ll be dragged forward as the attention spans of the rest of the group wane. So far in this trip not a single other group has been on any visitation site as long as we have, and I expect that to continue, as we’re working very slowly through the landscape.

As we finally began to get back on the pangas, many of the lizards were now entering the water. Which is perfect, because as soon as we were back at the boat we changed to snorkeling gear and went right out to find where they are eating underwater. And that snorkel turned into a real winning swim:

Yes, those are lizards swimming and eating under water (and one human). 

An aside: many of us were using Nikon 1’s underwater (including at least one J1 in an UW housing, but mostly AW1s). As you probably noticed, this site probably now has more underwater shots with those cameras than Nikon’s, and very authentic ones. The AW1 turned out to be a near perfect snorkeling camera. The other popular underwater camera was the GoPro, which also worked well:

During lunch we crossed back over to Isabela to Tagus Cove on Isabela, where we started with another snorkel (the photos above starting with Tony’s shot of the GoPro user). Then late in the afternoon we did a landscape walk up to a collapsed cinder cone. Tagus Cove itself is a collapsed cone, with the center actually in Darwin Lake (bottom water, below). Darwin Lake is salt water and sustains no wildlife.

As always, if you look carefully, you’ll find animals while you’re hiking:

Landings: Punta Espinoza is a dry landing that has a small wade through a mangrove pond; Tagus Cove is also a dry landing, though the rocks can be slippery with sea lions in the way 

Snorkeling: Tagus Cove snorkeling is done via panga generally along the rocky edges of the cove, very sheltered

Major New Sightings: masses of marine iguanas, iguanas eating underwater, rays, flightless cormorant 

Our choppiest night navigation yet took us to Puerto Ayora, the largest of the three towns in the islands. The first time I came here, the population was less than 1000. The last census apparently showed 21,000 permanent residents, and the differences between 1990 and 2014 are deep and broad. This sleepy little town is no longer sleepy. About the third time I came to the Galapagos my guide took me to a disco that had just opened. Now there are at least three night clubs with dancing. There’s public WiFi available at the pier. The roads are (mostly) paved, and a new electrical system is being put in from town to the highlands. 

Once again we set out early, arriving at the Charles Darwin Station before anyone else, which allowed us to linger at the various exhibits in ways that are impossible once the big ships—there’s a National Geographic ship in port—start spewing passengers. Oddly, one of the big male tortoises was trying to climb onto another one, which was amusing to watch. I mean, once you get on top, then what are you going to do? 

We also managed to see a few tortoise fights. With the saddleback tortoises, the fight is simple: stick your neck all the way out and see how high you can get your head. The one who’s looking down at the other wins. The fights rarely—but sometimes—go further, which would be the biting stage. But the tortoises generally only take one look at their opponent’s neck and declare a victor. 

The Darwin Station has now bred and reintroduced over 2000 giant tortoises on a number of islands, which is quite a breeding success. But it’s not just tortoises they work with, they also are working with land iguanas in a similar fashion. If you go back to Darwin’s days here, you find that he wrote about land iguanas on islands that today don’t have populations of them. 

From the station we met a bus to take us up to the highlands. Our first two stops were geological: the Twins, a set of large sinkholes, and a lava tube. It’s easy to forget that these islands are relatively young, and that they don’t really have nearby land to have wind blow dirt onto them. While there’s plenty of vegetation around, it’s a thin layer on top of volcanic deposits. Mangroves are often the first plant life settler in such situations, and we see them everywhere on the islands. 

Our main destination in the highlands was one of the farms. Yes, there is private land on some of these islands, the largest amount here on Santa Cruz. However, the giant tortoises are protected even if they cross over into private land. A long time ago some of the farmers saw ways to encourage tortoises to remain in parts of their acreage (hint: build ponds and mud holes) and cater to the tourism business. These operations are one place where you can see the animals close up, in quantity, and in something akin to the territory you’d have seen them in had you arrived before Darwin (one difference: introduced grasses and plants that wouldn’t have been in these areas, though the tortoises still would have been).

Just look for a mud hole and you’re likely to find a tortoise. If not (and even if you do, just be patient):

Yep, they get quite muddy (check out the left side of the above tortoise’s shell after he came out of the pond). 

It’s always interesting watching people’s reactions to seeing the tortoises on Santa Cruz (at the research station and in the highlands). If your boat hasn’t made many stops yet and this is the first place you see land iguanas and tortoises, the excitement will be palpable, and the group tends to spend lots of time lingering on the animals. On the other hand, if you’ve been cruising for most of a week as we have, and have seen these animals in their natural habitat, the most interesting thing about a day like today is that you can find someplace to sell you ice cream ;~). 

We came back to the boat for lunch and a nap, then in the late afternoon those that wanted to headed into town to souvenir shop. Today and tomorrow are our “lower key” days in the middle of the trip, where our schedule is a little more relaxed and we’re around a few more people from other boats. Come Monday, we’ll be back at places where we’ll be doing three and four activities a day and concentrating on getting better photographs. This weekend, though, is a little bit more like vacation time than serious photography time.

Landings: Both the Darwin Station area and the main town have piers that are dry landings. At Darwin Station, sometimes you have a bit of rough water and marine iguanas or sea lions on the dock to deal with. At the main town dock, the main problem is human congestion. Puerto Ayora actually now has designated docks for various boats/groups, and a complex water taxi system, as well. 

Significant New Sightings: People! Lots of them. Cars, buses, places that sell ice cream. At Darwin Station you can usually see sub-species that you can’t see on most tours, as it has breeding populations for both tortoises and iguanas for islands and sites that currently don’t have them available to tourism.  

We’re back at our starting point, Puerto Moreno, because the boat needs to get restocked and readied for our second week of cruising, this time through the Southern Islands of the Galapagos. If we had been a typical one-week cruise, we’d have disembarked after breakfast this morning and driven to the airport to return to the mainland. Instead, we’re having a low key day as we get for another spin around the islands.

The blog entry will be a little short today because I’m remaining on the boat and doing some other much-needed writing. I don’t want to get home and have two-weeks of no writing for books and the main sites behind me. I also spent part of the morning washing clothes, cleaning gear, and rearranging my cabin to get rid of the week’s worth of clutter I had accumulated. No photography for me today.

A small group of the workshop participants went out to a beach about an hour’s drive from town to spend the morning. 

After lunch, most of the group went for either a snorkel or a panga ride looking for shorebirds. We did do a short image review session with everyone after lunch, but that’s the extent of my workshop work today. 

So, a slow Sunday. There will be more to report tomorrow, as we head up the coast to two locations that should be rewarding. And then later in the week we hit two of my favorite places in the islands.

One thing before closing the document and moving on to other work: one week in the Galapagos is too brief, in my opinion. It’ll feel a little whirlwind, and you often don’t get second chances at a lot of the animals due to the way they’re distributed on the islands and your fixed itinerary. On the other hand, two weeks is a bit much to be deeply intense into the photography side. So if you come to the islands for a two-week trip, find a day in the middle where you can just relax and unwind. It’ll usually come right at the 7 day mark with the boat in port, so you can even make it a “stroll around town” day if you want. Put the camera away as I did today and give the photographic mind a bit of subconscious time to think. That way when you start hitting those more exotic animals a second time in the second week, your brain will be ready to help you improve your shots. 

Now watch what’s going to happen: the shots from the second week will all go downhill on me ;~). I hope not. But time will tell. Still, that’s my advice: relax in the middle of a two-week Galapagos trip.

Early this morning the Letty pulled into Punta Suarez on the island of Espanola. This is the motherlode of photographic targets, and we’re attacking it with a plan. Our two sisters boats, the Eric and Flamingo I are with us this morning, and we’re the only boats here. We’ve been loosely coordinating our schedules when we’re at the same site, and this morning we literally stepped onto land the minute the park opened. The nice thing about the early start and the coordination with our other boats is that we had over an hour at Punta Suarez all to ourselves. With good early morning light, to boot. 

And in that first hour, I don’t think we moved more than a 100 yards. 

Many of the male marine iguanas here are still in their Christmas colors (green and red, splashing orange). Even though mating season is over for them, a few apparently haven’t got the message to shed their colors and go back to basic black. The addition of color, of course, makes it a heck of a lot easier to photograph them. For once we’re not photographing black on black. 

But this is perhaps a good time to talk about something else that should happen on a trip like this: you’ve gotten over your virginity to the place and the animals. This is a trickier subject than you might guess. 

The very first time you encounter a marine iguana (or any other animal or place) you have the giddy excitement of "first discovery.” Your brain is responding to new inputs, and that’s generally a good thing. If you utilize that correctly, you can put that energy and excitement into your compositions. Most don’t, however. The temptation is to just press the darned shutter button at first encounter with a somewhat random composition. Go ahead and do that, but once that’s out of your system, you need to start using your eye/brain connection to maximize what you can do with what’s in front of you. 

But we’re on what, our thousandth marine iguana this trip? The other thing sets in, too: complacency. “Oh, I’ve got a decent shot of those, I’ll look for something else.” No, no, no. You came to the Galapagos for the unique animals and environment, don’t start passing over things just because you think you’ve seen them before and have a decent shot of them. This is the thing that pros learn: there’s always a better shot, you just have to find it. Then you have to work at it. Then you have to evaluate it and work at it some more.

Now this isn’t the best marine iguana shot I’ve ever taken, not by a wide margin. But it’s a shot I took today because I was still trying to look, still trying to react to what I saw. In this particular case, it was the almost wistful look on the poor fella’s face that attracted me. That’s why I chose to crop where I did (this is within a few pixels of the full 24mp frame; in my quick post processing I took out a bit at the left where the spikes on his spine didn’t look right at the edge). 

Looking at my files shows me that I got to this shot six minutes after I started shooting this fella. This is one reason why I never throw images away until after I’ve had a chance to look at them on a computer for some time; sometimes you can learn things just from the EXIF data. What was I changing? Did that work? Is there something I missed that I should have worked through some more? Your files should be full of failures. We learn best from failures, but only if we take the time to examine them and evaluate why they failed. I notice a lot of people, for example, routinely just erase missed exposures on the camera (Delete button, Delete button on the Nikons). Wait? Do you realize how many missed exposures you’ve been making? No, because you’ve erased them all and can’t count them. If I were to find that of 2000 shots I took today that 1000 of them were bad exposures, guess what I’d be working on next time I go out and shoot? Seriously, import everything into Lightroom, tag each image with your failure point, and then have Lightroom show you a summary of your failure tags. 

Some suggested tags: overexposure, underexposure, missed focus, motion blur due to shutter speed, too shallow DOF, too deep DOF, tilted horizon, cut off part of subject, distracting background, distracting foreground, pokeys at edge of frame, wrong white balance, and so on. 

Other early excitement came from lots of playful sea lions, mating doves, the endemic lava lizard that’s rather large, plus some additional birds, such as the Espanola-endemic Mockingbird (slightly bigger and different than its cousins we’ve been seeing). 

We decided to split into “fast” and “slow” groups this morning. The “slow” group was away from the boat for over four hours. That should tell you something about our day at Suarez. 

Nesting Nazca boobies on the trail. The blow-hole near the end of the trail. Female iguanas digging nests for the eggs, also on the trail. Galapagos hawks battling for territory. 

But the highlight of the morning was certainly the Waved Albatross. Two weeks ago, our guide says he saw exactly one albatross. Not only did we see many of them, we saw eggs, fights, courting, taking off, landing, and lots and lots of cliff soaring. These big, elegant birds only come to land here at Punta Suarez, and they are only here the short time that they’re courting and mating. Juveniles spend their first six years over the ocean, and albatross are one of those birds that can sleep while flying. We apparently hit just as most of the birds were coming back to the island and going through their mating rituals, though at least one of them had been there awhile judging from what we found on the trail:

Punta Suarez fast turned into a focus and buffer testing site for our two groups. Even I spent a lot of time photographing the albatross and filling my buffer. 

Once we were back on the boat, the captain moved the boat from the Western edge of Espanola to Gardiner Bay on the Eastern side. Our afternoon schedule is snorkeling with sea turtles, kayaking, and finally another beach combing expedition on the white sands of Gardiner. 

Landings: Punta Suarez is a dry landing, though the rock dock can be wet from wave action; Gardiner is a wet landing. 

Significant New Sightings: Albatross, albatross eggs, albatross mating rituals; the blow hole.

We’re anchored back at Academy Bay on Santa Cruz this morning. The boat has some maintenance work that needs to be done in port while we’re off exploring. So it’s back up to the highlands again, this time to Cerro Mesa (Table Hill). 

We found a lot of small birds, but we’re actually looking for the vermillion flycatcher, one of the few things we haven’t checked off our To See list. This led us to a long hike down a path that our naturalist thought connected back to where we started, but instead we walked a long way downhill to get to a place where the path was overgrown and would need a machete to proceed. Oops. Back up the hill we go. By the time we finally got to lunch everyone was calling it the Death Walk, much to the chagrin of the naturalists. It wasn’t really all that bad a walk, but we expended a lot of energy for no results. Okay, a few Darwin finches were photographed, but our red-bodied prey avoided us. 

After a barbecue lunch, the group turned to…karaoke. The highland restaurant we dined at has a little bit of everything: soccer field, pool table, pool, hammock, you name it. But we spent an extra hour or two signing karaoke. You never know what you’re going to encounter in the Galapagos. 

Most of the group seemed a bit tired after our walk and declined to participate short of me forcing them to. Personally, I channeled my inner Morrison and stuck to Doors songs, much to the chagrin of the owner, who couldn’t top my reported score of 98.5. Break on through to the other side…

Don’t worry, things will pick up in our last days, as we’re scheduled to hit a couple more of my favorite places. 

New Sightings: Thom singing.

We’re on our grand finale day, and the two islands we visit today are excellent windups to our tour.

First up is Plazas Sur, a small island off Santa Cruz. This is one of those places where you can spend all day. As you step off the dock—assuming the sea lions let you—you’ll usually find land iguanas just to the right of the trail, in the trail, and all along the both trails (to the left and up the hill). I almost immediately noted to the naturalist that it seemed like the population had exploded from the last time I was here, and the response was “the park service is considering moving some of iguanas across the channel to Plazas Norte. 

The interesting thing about Plazas Sur is that the primary feed for the iguanas is the cacti, but the only cacti here generally don’t reach to the ground. Thus, there’s high competition for food, since the lizards can only reach their primary food by reaching up high (standing on something) or waiting for it to fall off. This also meant the iguanas tended to be aggressive, plus there also seemed to be a lot of mating going on. 

And we saw examples of that almost immediately upon getting off the Zodiac:

But the other thing about Sur is that the terrain is great for lizard portraits shots:

One thing to look for when you have such a target rich environment is whether or not you can tell a little story. It doesn’t have to be a big story, just a sequence of shots that tell what happened. This fellow (and yes, he’s a male, probably even an alpha male), for instance, came running over to find a cactus pad on the ground that for some reason wasn’t occupied. He started chowing down. When a female came over, he shared with her. But when another male came along, he chased that poor guy off. Then he came back and mated with the female (I won’t show that image):

Not a big story. But note that because I was thinking “story” I was trying to frame up my shots as something more than lizard head. I had plenty of lens to do that, so the sequence could have lizard head, lizard head eating, lizard heads eating, lizard head hissing, lizard heads mating. Unfortunately, I was stuck in an area where the marked path was narrow, otherwise I would have done more to change angles, too. Still, I was looking for ways to make each shot different and tell a new part of the story. 

Once past the lizards—which took some of us quite a long, long time, time measured in hours—you arrive at the top of the rise on the island to find a seaside cliff that the birds love flying along:

Yeah, it was crazy. For hours. I’m doing a huge amount of pruning of the good images I was sent by students here. It seems that everyone was filling buffers and cards and getting their birds in flight fill. 

After lunch we moved to Seymour Norte. Guess what we find here? You guessed it, more land iguanas, more birds in flight, and a return of our favorite red balloon, the frigate bird. But what most folk got caught up shooting were the Boobie mating dances in good light, so I’ll just show a few of those. 

Since this is our last shore visit, I tried to look for fitting “final” images for our trip. Here’s what I came up with:

Judging from everyone’s expressions and conversations back at the boat, everyone had a great day today, and felt the workshop ending with another of those Galapagos' big bangs. This was a long day, but one that was shoot, shoot, shoot. From iguanas at sunrise to frigate birds at sunset. I hope the images did it justice for those of you who weren’t there.

Landings: Plazas Sur has a rock dock that’s generally very easy to get off on, though it can be slippery, especially if the sea lions have also been using it; likewise, Seymour Norte also has a rock dock, though it tends to be fairly slippery and waves can come up and make it more slippery.